The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I was lucky enough to know indirectly a person who opened a museum for these wonderful mechanical music makers in St. Louis in the early 60s. I worked for one summer as a guide and got to feed the cardboard music books into the large band organs, they were quite wonderful. There are some LP records out there somewhere from Paul Akins Gay Nineties Music Museum that show case them. One thing about it though is he wasn't very good about seeing that they were tuned well and often played somewhat out of tune. For my own taste I much preferred the more subtle player piano or reproducing piano which we still own the last one Ampico put together. I say put together because it was three years after the actual factory stopped producing them and some of the parts installed in the custom installation in our Steinway were cobbled together from model B and A parts. The large band organs are fun for a bit, but after a while it all sounds about the same.

Larry